Grasping Reality with All Tentacles: bradford-delong.com:

• Highlighted
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• Reading, Videos, etc.

http://www.bradford-delong.com/highlighted.html

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Plus: Six Very Recent Must- and Should-Reads:

1. Jens H.E. Christensen and Glenn D. Rudebusch: New Evidence for a Lower New Normal in Interest Rates: "Inflation-indexed bond prices include a real term premium... face appreciable liquidity risk... http://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economic-letter/2017/june/financial-market-evidence-for-lower-natural-interest-rate-r-star/
2. Nick Bunker: Is the Fed being misguided by the Phillips curve?: "Looking at the prime-age employment rate, the labor market might have a bit more tightening to do before wage growth is going to pick up significantly... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/is-the-fed-being-misguided-by-the-phillips-curve/
3. Donald A. Yerxa: AN INTERVIEW WITH BRYAN WARD-PERKINS ON THE FALL OF ROME http://www.webcitation.org/6O3GYBfS1?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bu.edu%2Fhistoric%2Fhs%2Fperkins.pdf: "'AT THE HOUR OF MIDNIGHT THE SALERIAN GATE WAS silently opened, and the inhabitants were awakened by the tremendous sound of the Gothic trumpet...
4. Sergio Espuelas: The inequality trap. A comparative analysis of social spending between 1880 and 1930: "Using social transfers as an indicator of redistribution and three alternative proxies for inequality... http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-0289.12062/full
5. Robert Waldmann (2007): The Simple Analytics of Progressive Income Redistribution: "Economists generally agree that redistribution reduces money-metric welfare... http://rjwaldmann.blogspot.com/2007/06/possible-efficiency-gains-due-to-taxes.html
6. Michael Reich, Sylvia Allegretto, and Anna Godoey: Seattle’s Minimum Wage Experience 2015-16: "Seattle implemented the first phase of its minimum wage law on April 1, 2015... http://irle.berkeley.edu/seattles-minimum-wage-experience-2015-16/

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Plus: Six Very Recent Links:

1. Sarah Kliff: The Better Care Reconciliation Act: the Senate bill to repeal and replace Obamacare, explained https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/6/22/15846728/senate-plan-better-care-reconciliation-act
2. Christopher Meissner and John Tang: Japan's entry into world markets during the first age of globalisation: "The Japanese experience after the liberalisation of the 1850s suggests that trade costs, destination market demand conditions, and product specific factors played key roles..." http://voxeu.org/article/japans-entry-world-markets-during-first-age-globalisation
3. Tavneet Suri: VoxDev http://voxdev.org/
4. Neville Morley: 1600 Pylos & Sphacteria Avenue: "Some readers of Thucydides see it as a warning against war, others as a licence for the exercise of power. As a text, it doesn’t do enough to discourage those determined to find a simplistic justification of their wish to burn the world. Start digging those bunkers, people; Thucydides is back in the White House..." https://thesphinxblog.com/2017/06/22/1600-pylos-sphacteria-avenue/
5. James Hamilton: Why you should never use the Hodrick-Prescott: "The HP filter has serious drawbacks.... For random walk series, subsequently observed patterns are likely to be artefacts of having applied the filter, rather than due to the underlying data-generating process..." http://voxeu.org/article/why-you-should-never-use-hodrick-prescott-filter
6. Greg Leiserson: It’s no surprise that the Kansas tax cut experiment failed to create jobs: "Businesses already pay relatively little tax on the incremental return from investments in tangible capital due to tax benefits such as accelerated depreciation and interest deductibility, and they often pay no tax—or even receive a tax subsidy—on marginal investments in intangible capital..." http://equitablegrowth.org/research-analysis/its-no-surprise-that-the-kansas-tax-cut-experiment-failed-to-create-jobs/

Ten Years Ago at Grasping Reality: June 21, 2017

Five pieces definitely worth rereading: (1) Tanta watches the gathering financial crisis, which is still in schadenfreude mode; (2) Peter Orszag lays out health care reform options; (3) As You Know Bob has fun with electromagnetism; (4-6) are a bunch of well-paid journalists being dicks, and Dan Froomkin and the staff of McClatchy doing their proper jobs.

• The Late, Great Tanta of Calculated Risk: The Bear Stearns Reporting Contest http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/06/the-bear-stearn.html
• Peter Orszag on Health Care Opportunities and Challenges http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/06/peter-orszag-on.html: "Jared Bernstein says that we must all troop off and read what Peter Orszag, our Nonpartisan High Priest of Policy and Budgetary Rationality, has to say about health care..."
• Possibilities for Really Cheap Entertainment http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/06/possibilities-f.html: As You Know, Bob: "Come sunset, I went down to the basement and dug out a couple of 48" fluorescent bulbs, and threw them and the family into the car. We drove over to the nearest high-voltage power line, and we watched the fireflies while we waited for full dark, and then we played light sabers in the gloaming..."
• Slate and Ron Rosenbaum pwn themselves completely by complaining about the salacious picture of Angelina Jolie they republish: Self-Pwnage Department http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/06/self-pwnage-dep.html
• Rick Perlstein: : Bloggers vs. Heathers: "[Dan] Froomkin got the last word He said: that's precisely the point. You don't respond to administration lies about Iran by not running Iran stories. You respond to it by doing stories - about adminstration lies about Iran......" http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/06/rick-perlstein-.html
• Hoisted From Comments: Your #1 Source for DC News Ought to Be: McClatchy Washington Bureau http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/06/hoisted-from-co.html: Corvid writes: "McClatchy also led the way on the U.S. Attorney scandal. Here's the deal with McClatchy, formerly Knight-Ridder: They're not a big-name MSM news organization, therefore they avoid the huge handicap of having Washington insiders leak to them..."

Must-Read: Nick Bunker: Is the Fed being misguided by the Phillips curve?: "Looking at the prime-age employment rate, the labor market might have a bit more tightening to do before wage growth is going to pick up significantly... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/is-the-fed-being-misguided-by-the-phillips-curve/

Should-Read: Sergio Espuelas: The inequality trap. A comparative analysis of social spending between 1880 and 1930: "Using social transfers as an indicator of redistribution and three alternative proxies for inequality... http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-0289.12062/full

Must-Read: Mark Thoma sends us to:

Jens H.E. Christensen and Glenn D. Rudebusch: New Evidence for a Lower New Normal in Interest Rates: "Inflation-indexed bond prices include a real term premium... face appreciable liquidity risk... http://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economic-letter/2017/june/financial-market-evidence-for-lower-natural-interest-rate-r-star/

Must-Read: Low-end labor markets simply do not appear to work like competitive markets. Rather, they work like markets in which employers have substantial market power—and thus minimum wage laws have the same efficiency benefits as does natural-monopoly rate regulation. Why low-end labor markets do not appear to work like competitive markets is a very interesting—and, I believe, unsolved—question. But it is in all likelihood a fact to deal with:

Michael Reich, Sylvia Allegretto, and Anna Godoey: Seattle’s Minimum Wage Experience 2015-16: "Seattle implemented the first phase of its minimum wage law on April 1, 2015... http://irle.berkeley.edu/seattles-minimum-wage-experience-2015-16/

Should-Read: Eugene Wei (2012): Amazon, Apple, and the beauty of low margins: "Amazon's core retail business is, I'd argue, still very secure... http://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2012/11/28/amazon-and-margins

Ten Years Ago in Grasping Reality: June 20, 2017

• Three Links for 2007-06-21 http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/06/links-for-2007-.html: "Spencer Ackerman: There are about 200 Foreign Service Officers in the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. Ten are fluent in Arabic..."
• Your #1 Source for DC News Ought to Be: McClatchy Washington Bureau http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/06/your-1-source-f.html
• Joshua Micah Marshall thinks Rudy Giuliani Is Toast http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/06/joshua-micah-ma.html
• Dogs Are Allowed http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/06/dogs-are-allowe.html
• International Income Comparisons Once Again http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/06/international_i.html 2007-06-20
• Guest Lecture on John Maynard Keynes http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/06/guest_lecture_o.html
• Greg Ip Writes About Ben Bernanke, Mortgages, the Financial Accelerator, and the Macroeconomic Consequences of "Financial Fragility" http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/06/greg_ip_writes_.html
• Mark Thoma Is Irate This Morning: Modelling the Social Value of Microsoft http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/06/mark_thoma_is_i.html
• Weblog Organization http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/06/weblog_organiza.html
• Sheryl Sandberg Interviews Michael Bloomberg http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/06/sheryl_sandberg.html
• Ten Links for 2007-06-20 http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/06/links_for_20070_18.html

Procrastinating on June 20, 2017

Over at Equitable Growth: Must- and Should-Reads:

• Hoisted from the Archives from 2007: How Supply-Side Economics Trickled Down… http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/hoisted-from-the-archives-from-2007-how-supply-side-economics-trickled-down/
• Donald A. Yerxa: AN INTERVIEW WITH BRYAN WARD-PERKINS ON THE FALL OF ROME http://www.webcitation.org/6O3GYBfS1?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bu.edu%2Fhistoric%2Fhs%2Fperkins.pdf: "'AT THE HOUR OF MIDNIGHT THE SALERIAN GATE WAS silently opened, and the inhabitants were awakened by the tremendous sound of the Gothic trumpet...
• Heather Boushey: The unfortunate power of stereotypes: "If stereotypes lead judges to snap judgements that are racially biased... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/the-unfortunate-power-of-stereotypes/
• Nick Bunker: Weekend Reading: Shifting Targets Edition: "Some critics of the disability insurance system in the United States think it is too easy to access... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/weekend-reading-shifting-targets-edition/
• Ben Thompson: Amazon’s New Customer: "the key to understanding the purchase of Whole Foods... is that Amazon is buying a customer—the first-and-best customer that will instantly bring its grocery efforts to scale... https://stratechery.com/2017/amazons-new-customer/
• Mark Thoma: Trump’s Apprenticeships are Based upon a Problem That Doesn’t Exist: "The evidence... points to a skills mismatch... http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2017/06/19/Trump-s-Apprenticeships-are-Based-upon-Problem-Doesn-t-Exist
• Izabella Kaminska: On the rise of unproductive entrepreneurs like Travis Kalanick https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2017/06/15/2190201/on-the-rise-of-unproductive-entrepreneurs-like-travis-kalanick/: "Robert E. Litan and Ian Hathaway... citing the work of William Baumol, who passed away last month...
• Paul Krugman: A Finger Exercise On Hyperglobalization: "I find myself trying to find simple ways to talk about 'hyperglobalization'... https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2017/06/14/a-finger-exercise-on-hyperglobalization/
• David Glasner: FIFTEEN THOUSAND WORDS ON TEMPORARY EQUILIBRIUM, EXPECTATIONS, AND CONSISTENCY OF PLANS
• Neel Kashkari: Why I Dissented Again: "The economy is sending mixed signals: a tight labor market and weakening inflation... https://medium.com/@neelkashkari/why-i-dissented-again-b8579ab664b7

Reading List for an Ungiven Course: The "Classical" Mediterranean Economy

It looks to me as though I should admit (to myself at least) that I am unlikely to ever teach my course the "classical" Mediterranean economy. Thus it is time for me to move it to the Assignment Desk--things that I really wish other people work on.

Here is the skeleton of the reading list: things that I think must be on it.

Should-Read: Donald A. Yerxa: AN INTERVIEW WITH BRYAN WARD-PERKINS ON THE FALL OF ROME http://www.webcitation.org/6O3GYBfS1?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bu.edu%2Fhistoric%2Fhs%2Fperkins.pdf: "'AT THE HOUR OF MIDNIGHT THE SALERIAN GATE WAS silently opened, and the inhabitants were awakened by the tremendous sound of the Gothic trumpet...

Notes: Polanyi: Aristotle Discovers the Economy: Hoisted from the Archives

**Hoisted from the Archives Notes: Polanyi: Aristotle Discovers the Economy http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2003_archives/001464.html: A whole bunch of this article is simply wrong: the claims that "in the fourth century... Greeks initiated the gainful business practices that in much later days developed into the dynamo of market comnpetition" are false. This means that Polanyi is wrong when he says that Aristotle is examining a new phenomenon when he looks at the economy. Aristotle is examining an old phenomenon from the point of view of an Athenian aristocrat.

But there is much of value in Polanyi's exposition of what Aristotle says...

Should-Read: Nick Bunker: Weekend Reading: Shifting Targets Edition: "Some critics of the disability insurance system in the United States think it is too easy to access... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/weekend-reading-shifting-targets-edition/

Should-Read: Heather Boushey: The unfortunate power of stereotypes: "If stereotypes lead judges to snap judgements that are racially biased... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/the-unfortunate-power-of-stereotypes/

Must-Read: Ben Thompson: Amazon’s New Customer: "the key to understanding the purchase of Whole Foods... is that Amazon is buying a customer—the first-and-best customer that will instantly bring its grocery efforts to scale... https://stratechery.com/2017/amazons-new-customer/

Should-Read: Mark Thoma: Trump’s Apprenticeships are Based upon a Problem That Doesn’t Exist: "The evidence... points to a skills mismatch... http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2017/06/19/Trump-s-Apprenticeships-are-Based-upon-Problem-Doesn-t-Exist

Should-Read: Paul Krugman: A Finger Exercise On Hyperglobalization: "I find myself trying to find simple ways to talk about 'hyperglobalization'... https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2017/06/14/a-finger-exercise-on-hyperglobalization/

Should-Read: Izabella Kaminska: On the rise of unproductive entrepreneurs like Travis Kalanick https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2017/06/15/2190201/on-the-rise-of-unproductive-entrepreneurs-like-travis-kalanick/: "Robert E. Litan and Ian Hathaway... citing the work of William Baumol, who passed away last month...

"A Conspiracy So Immense": Tail-Gunner Joe McCarthy: Hoisted from the Archives:

"A Conspiracy So Immense": Is the American right any crazier than it ever was? No. It was the submersion of the crazy right during the "end of ideology" age that was weird.

Exhibit 1: William F. Buckley and Eliot Abrams. Buckley, remember, is the person whose reaction to Catholics being allowed into Yale on equal terms was: "let's be sure to keep the Jews down!" And Abrams... you will see...

"A Conspiracy so Immense": Tail-Gunner Joe McCarthy http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2006/05/history_lesson_.html: William F. Buckley says:

Live from the Mission: Mission Chinese: Mongolian Long Beans: SERVES 4 AS A SIDE DISH: "I’m not exactly sure why we call these Mongolian long beans...

Ten Years Ago at Grasping Reality: June 14-June 19, 2017

A bunch of stuff. This is, I think, the most worth reading. It's a big problem. It's a big problem that we have had ever since Newt Gingrich launched his assault on the George H.W. Bush GOP, and the George H.W. Bush GOP responded by surrendering unconditionally:

• A Proposed Pecking Order for Honest Conservatives http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/06/a_proposed_peck.html: As far as honest conservatives are concerned, it's a difficult question. Those I usually suggest... I find dismissed as "not typical conservatives. We want a representative of the conservative point of view. Someone like Larry Kudlow or Ramesh Ponnuru."... Those who reject my advice are (as is almost always true) making a mistake.... We want an "honest conservative"--a conservative intellectual adversary we can respect, who is also intelligent. But their first move is to define a "conservative" as a public supporter of the Bush regime and its deeds. That means, I think, that they are searching the empty set. Slavoj Zizek applied this to the puppet regimes of Eastern Europe under the iron curtain: "The Trilemma: Of the three features—-personal honesty, sincere support of the regime, and intelligence—-it was possible to combine only two, never all three. If one was honest and supportive, one was not very bright; if one was bright and supportive, one was not honest; if one was honest and bright, one was not supportive..." But it applies just as well to the Bush regime...

Hoisted from from Ten Years Ago: Kevin Hassett' Self-Smackdown: Yes, Kevin Hassett Is a Real Nutjob. Why Do You Ask?

Not as bad as Kevin Hassett's declarations that CERN's Large Hadron Collider might "swallow the Earth" and that the U.S. has "no recourse short of military action" to deal with the fact that "as science progresses, the possibility climbs ever higher that the fondest dreams of scientists might entail risks of planetary destruction.... The best science explores things far from our understanding. How can we know that things we do not understand will not kill us?"

But very bad even so:

Kevin Hassett (June 18, 2007): Why Did the Fed Help North Korea Launder Money? https://www.aei.org/publication/why-did-the-fed-help-north-korea-launder-money/: "Last week the New York Federal Reserve made what may go down as the most misguided move in the history of the Federal Reserve system....

Worth Hoisting from Grasping Reality's Archives from April 2007

A baker's dozen:

• One piece on the information-age economy (CITRIS)
• One piece on finance (equity premium)
• One piece on quantum weirdness (erasers)
• Two pieces on the public sphere's inadequacies (Greenspanese, supply-siders)
• Five pieces on journamalism (Gordon, Frankel, and Hiatt; Douthat and Ricks; Bird on Hiss; the Economist's Lexington; Joe Klein)
• Three pieces on the pathologies of the right (Luskin, Novak, the end of the reality-based right)

Links for the Week of June 19, 2017

Must-Reads:

• David Glasner: FIFTEEN THOUSAND WORDS ON TEMPORARY EQUILIBRIUM, EXPECTATIONS, AND CONSISTENCY OF PLANS
• Neel Kashkari: Why I Dissented Again: "The economy is sending mixed signals: a tight labor market and weakening inflation... https://medium.com/@neelkashkari/why-i-dissented-again-b8579ab664b7
• Janet Yellen and Nancy Marchall Genzer: Janet Yellen Interested in Reevaluating 2% https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4673824/janet-yellen-interested-reevaluating-2: "Nancy Marchall Genzer, Marketplace: 'Recently, a group of economists sent the Fed a letter...
• Lawrence Summers: 5 reasons the Fed may be making a mistake http://delong.typepad.com/summers5-reasons.zip: "The... paradigm... is highly problematic.  Much better would be a “shoot only when you see the whites of the eyes of inflation” paradigm...
• David Grabowski, Jonathan Gruber, and Vincent Mor: You’re Probably Going to Need Medicaid: "Imagine your mother needs to move into a nursing home... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/13/opinion/youre-probably-going-to-need-medicaid.html?ref=opinion&_r=0
• Barry Ritholtz: Tax Reform Is Dead: "The long-awaited 'pivot towards being presidential' hasn’t arrived, and by all indications never will... http://ritholtz.com/2017/06/tax-reform-dead/
• Nick Bunker: On Twitter: "That staffer was probably looking for a long time..."
• Robert Waldmann (2007): The Simple Analytics of Progressive Income Redistribution: "Economists generally agree that redistribution reduces money-metric welfare... http://rjwaldmann.blogspot.com/2007/06/possible-efficiency-gains-due-to-taxes.html

Hoisted from the Archives: How Supply-Side Economics Trickled Down...

Hoisted from the Archives: How Supply-Side Economics Trickled Down... http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/04/how_supplyside_.html: Bruce Bartlett's piece on supply-side economics:

How Supply-Side Economics Trickled Down - New York Times: AS one who was present at the creation of “supply-side economics” back in the 1970s, I think it is long past time that the phrase be put to rest. It did its job, creating a new consensus among economists on how to look at the national economy. But today it has become a frequently misleading and meaningless buzzword that gets in the way of good economic policy...

sparked an interesting and useful debate at Mark Thoma's Economist's View (which I previously noted).

Must-Read: David Glasner says smart things about what Hayekian business cycle theory would have been had Hayek based his business cycle theory on his own insights into the price mechanism, rather than following the path he did, of attempting to reanimate a zombie version of the monetary overinvestment cycle.

It has always struck me as very strange: monetary overinvestment business cycle theories have very strong implications about how price systems are incapable of handling coordination problems. Yet the entire thrust of the rest of Hayek's economics is on how price systems are often able to do so rather well...

David Glasner: FIFTEEN THOUSAND WORDS ON TEMPORARY EQUILIBRIUM, EXPECTATIONS, AND CONSISTENCY OF PLANS:

Must-Read: Even if people are unconvinced by Neal Kashkari's other arguments, I truly do not understand why his risk management argument is not decisively convincing:

Neel Kashkari: Why I Dissented Again: "The economy is sending mixed signals: a tight labor market and weakening inflation... https://medium.com/@neelkashkari/why-i-dissented-again-b8579ab664b7

Procrastinating on June 16, 2017

Over at Equitable Growth: Must- and Should-Reads:

• Brad DeLong (2007): Tom Grubisich Is One Unhappy Camper: "Tom Grubisich... a former Washington Post reporter and editor [says]... http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/05/tom_grubisich_i.html
• Kavya Vaghul: Conservation easements and tax policies in the United States: "Deductions for conservation easement donations are taken by taxpayers in states that have small shares of conserved land... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/conservation-easements-and-tax-policies-in-the-united-states/
• Bridget Ansel: A research roundup on unpredictable schedules in the United States: "For Americans with a 9-to-5 job, it can be hard to imagine the life of a worker with an unpredictable, constantly shifting schedule... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/a-research-roundup-on-unpredictable-schedules-in-the-united-states/
• Janet Yellen and Nancy Marchall Genzer: Janet Yellen Interested in Reevaluating 2% https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4673824/janet-yellen-interested-reevaluating-2: "Nancy Marchall Genzer, Marketplace: 'Recently, a group of economists sent the Fed a letter...
• Lawrence Summers: 5 reasons the Fed may be making a mistake http://delong.typepad.com/summers5-reasons.zip: "The... paradigm... is highly problematic.  Much better would be a “shoot only when you see the whites of the eyes of inflation” paradigm...
• David Cutler and Emily Gee: Coverage Losses Under the ACA Repeal Bill for Congressional Districts in All States: "Within a decade, on average, an additional 55,000 more individuals in each congressional district, or nearly 8 percent... would lack coverage... https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/healthcare/news/2017/03/21/428914/coverage-losses-aca-repeal-bill-congressional-districts-states/
• Dodge Cahan and Niklas Potrafke: The Democratic-Republican Presidential Growth Gap and the Partisan Balance of the State Governments: "Higher economic growth was generated during Democratic presidencies compared to Republican presidencies... http://econpapers.repec.org/paper/cesceswps/_5f6517.htm
• David Grabowski, Jonathan Gruber, and Vincent Mor: You’re Probably Going to Need Medicaid: "Imagine your mother needs to move into a nursing home... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/13/opinion/youre-probably-going-to-need-medicaid.html?ref=opinion&_r=0
• Laura Tyson: Labor Markets in the Age of Automation: "Skill-biased and labor-displacing intelligent machines and automation drive income inequality in several other ways... https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/automation-labor-market-inequality-by-laura-tyson-2017-06
• Barry Ritholtz: Tax Reform Is Dead: "The long-awaited 'pivot towards being presidential' hasn’t arrived, and by all indications never will... http://ritholtz.com/2017/06/tax-reform-dead/

Should-Read: Brad DeLong (2007): Tom Grubisich Is One Unhappy Camper: "Tom Grubisich... a former Washington Post reporter and editor [says]... http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/05/tom_grubisich_i.html

Should-Read: Bridget Ansel: A research roundup on unpredictable schedules in the United States: "For Americans with a 9-to-5 job, it can be hard to imagine the life of a worker with an unpredictable, constantly shifting schedule... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/a-research-roundup-on-unpredictable-schedules-in-the-united-states/

Should-Read: Kavya Vaghul: Conservation easements and tax policies in the United States: "Deductions for conservation easement donations are taken by taxpayers in states that have small shares of conserved land... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/conservation-easements-and-tax-policies-in-the-united-states/

Should-Read: So has anybody ever produced a CalTech freshman level lecture on why spin-1/2 particles obey Fermi-Dirac statistics? Bose-Einstein statistics I kinda sorta get why, but Fermi-Dirac... http://amzn.to/2rl3GyE

Must-Read: Janet Yellen gets it right. As I find myself saying a lot these days, if I were the Fed I would appoint an Inflation Target Level Technical Advisory Commission to write a report, and make Ben Bernanke and Larry Summers co-chair it:

Janet Yellen and Nancy Marchall Genzer: Janet Yellen Interested in Reevaluating 2% https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4673824/janet-yellen-interested-reevaluating-2: "Nancy Marchall Genzer, Marketplace: 'Recently, a group of economists sent the Fed a letter...

Must-Read: Lawrence Summers: 5 reasons the Fed may be making a mistake http://delong.typepad.com/summers5-reasons.zip: "The... paradigm... is highly problematic.  Much better would be a “shoot only when you see the whites of the eyes of inflation” paradigm...

Should-Read: Dodge Cahan and Niklas Potrafke: The Democratic-Republican Presidential Growth Gap and the Partisan Balance of the State Governments: "Higher economic growth was generated during Democratic presidencies compared to Republican presidencies... http://econpapers.repec.org/paper/cesceswps/_5f6517.htm

Should-Read: David Cutler and Emily Gee: Coverage Losses Under the ACA Repeal Bill for Congressional Districts in All States: "Within a decade, on average, an additional 55,000 more individuals in each congressional district, or nearly 8 percent... would lack coverage... https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/healthcare/news/2017/03/21/428914/coverage-losses-aca-repeal-bill-congressional-districts-states/

Must-Read: The misperceptions of the Overclass are on display here in the very sharp Barry Ritholtz's offhand observation that "Ronald Reagan... oversaw a... 'once in a generation' economic boost that resonated for the next 30 years..."

There was no such thing as far as economic growth was concerned: what Reagan presided over was the recovery to normal levels of activity from the 1979-1982 Volcker Deflation. The growth of the economy's productive potential he presided over was the same then-thought sub-par rate of growth as Carter. It was Clinton who presided over what looked to be a speed-up—hopes for which, have, alas!, been catastrophically dashed under his now-three successors.

But Reagan did not just preside over but initiated the enormous upward shift in the distribution of wealth that has so benefitted people like Barry Ritholtz, and me. But it was not an economic boost for the country—just one for people like him and me, purchased with what has been the worst more-than-a-generation in terms of economic growth that America's middle and working classes have ever experienced:

Barry Ritholtz: Tax Reform Is Dead: "The long-awaited 'pivot towards being presidential' hasn’t arrived, and by all indications never will... http://ritholtz.com/2017/06/tax-reform-dead/

Must-Read: David Grabowski, Jonathan Gruber, and Vincent Mor: You’re Probably Going to Need Medicaid: "Imagine your mother needs to move into a nursing home... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/13/opinion/youre-probably-going-to-need-medicaid.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

Should-Read: Laura Tyson: Labor Markets in the Age of Automation: "Skill-biased and labor-displacing intelligent machines and automation drive income inequality in several other ways... https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/automation-labor-market-inequality-by-laura-tyson-2017-06

Procrastinating on June 13, 2017

Over at Equitable Growth: Must- and Should-Reads:

• No, It Is Really Not Harder to Make the Case for Free Trade These Days… http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/no-it-is-really-not-harder-to-make-the-case-for-free-trade-these-days/
• I Am Heartened by the Improvement in the Prime-Age Employment Rate. Now Let Us Let It Continue Rather than Stopping It… http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/i-am-heartened-by-the-improvement-in-the-prime-age-employment-rate-now-let-us-let-it-continue-rather-than-stopping-it/
• Nick Bunker: Who loses disability insurance when it’s harder to apply?: "What actually happened when the closest Social Security field offices closed and the cost of applying increased?... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/who-loses-disability-insurance-when-its-harder-to-apply/
• William J. Collins and Marianne H. Wanamaker: Up from slavery? African American intergenerational economic mobility since 1880: "We document the intergenerational mobility of black and white American men from 1880 through 2000... http://equitablegrowth.org/working-papers/african-american-intergenerational-mobility/
• Nick Bunker: Time for the Fed to look beyond 2 percent target inflation?: "The idea that a stable and credible inflation target must be 2 percent is an accident of history... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/time-for-the-fed-to-look-beyond-2-percent-target-inflation/
• Nick Bunker: On Twitter: "That staffer was probably looking for a long time..."
• Robert Waldmann (2007): The Simple Analytics of Progressive Income Redistribution: "Economists generally agree that redistribution reduces money-metric welfare... http://rjwaldmann.blogspot.com/2007/06/possible-efficiency-gains-due-to-taxes.html
• B.G.: Because I said so: Why the Fed is likely to raise rates, despite low inflation: "Like a parent teaching a child it means business, the Fed may feel it must hike to preserve its credibility with financial markets... http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2017/06/because-i-said-so
• Cardiff Garcia: US capex, investment, and growth—re-re-upped: "Srinivas Thiruvadanthai... has passed along his interesting new note about capex... https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2017/06/06/2189480/us-capex-investment-and-growth/
• Dan Drezner: Why it is impossible for Donald Trump to rise to adequacy: "A few days ago I suggested that Trump’s NATO speech was a powerful signal that we had seen the limits of adult supervision at the White House... http://delong.typepad.com/drezner-chaos-muppet.zip
• Josh Bivens: Is 2 percent too low?: Rethinking the Fed’s arbitrary inflation target to avoid another Great Recession: "The end of 2017 will mark 10 years since the beginning of the Great Recession... http://www.epi.org/publication/is-2-percent-too-low/

Should-Read: Nick Bunker: Time for the Fed to look beyond 2 percent target inflation?: "The idea that a stable and credible inflation target must be 2 percent is an accident of history... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/time-for-the-fed-to-look-beyond-2-percent-target-inflation/

Should-Read: William J. Collins and Marianne H. Wanamaker: Up from slavery? African American intergenerational economic mobility since 1880: "We document the intergenerational mobility of black and white American men from 1880 through 2000... http://equitablegrowth.org/working-papers/african-american-intergenerational-mobility/

Should-Read: Who loses disability insurance when it’s harder to apply? Disabled people:

Nick Bunker: Who loses disability insurance when it’s harder to apply?: "What actually happened when the closest Social Security field offices closed and the cost of applying increased?... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/who-loses-disability-insurance-when-its-harder-to-apply/

Must-Read: The joke here: At the very top of the ADP Employment Report website https://www.adpemploymentreport.com it says: CHANGE IN US NONFARM PRIVATE SECTOR EMPLOYMENT. PRIVATE.

ADP has no government jobs subset, because ADP doesn't do any payroll processing for governments.

Yet neither Trump OMB Director Mark Mulvaney nor beat-sweetener-writer journamalist Alex Pappas have a clue. Clown show:

Nick Bunker: On Twitter: "That staffer was probably looking for a long time..." https://t.co/VTYtRS4TJU https://t.co/mvFkKu2i3b https://twitter.com/nick_bunker/status/874363647858024448

FoucaultAlthusserDerridaJameson

Hoisted from Ten Years Ago: FoucaultAlthusserDerridaJameson http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/06/foucaultalthuss.html: In comments and elsewhere, those with a sharp distaste for cultural studies "theory" in moral philosophy see it as one undifferentiated reactionary mass: FoucaultAlthusserDerridaJameson.

I want to draw some distinctions:

No, It Is Really Not Harder to Make the Case for Free Trade These Days...

Hoisted from Ten Years Ago: Still, I think, true today. Thus I continue to hoist my neoliberal freak flag here: Is It Really Harder to Make the Case for Free Trade These Days? http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/04/is_it_really_ha.html: Paul Krugman wonders if it is harder to make the case for free trade these days. There are more losers from trade liberalization, he thinks, and it is much less clear that the losers are in some sense "undeserving".

Must-Read: I really object to "money-metric social welfare" as a phrase. I prefer "false Negishi-price plutocratic weights for interpersonal utility comparisons". When you say the standard goal is to maximize consumer plus producer surplus, you are making interpersonal utility comparisons in a particularly stupid and cruel way. But that is largely orthogonal to Robert's—very, very good—point here:

Robert Waldmann (2007): The Simple Analytics of Progressive Income Redistribution: "Economists generally agree that redistribution reduces money-metric welfare... http://rjwaldmann.blogspot.com/2007/06/possible-efficiency-gains-due-to-taxes.html

Ten Years Ago in Grasping Reality: June 11-13, 2007

Two very much worth highlighting and hoisting:

• Is It Really Harder to Make the Case for Free Trade These Days? http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/04/is_it_really_ha.html: I think I have answers: (1) The kinds of win-win deals that Paul says we don't make are in fact deals that Democratic presidents do make--when they aren't blocked from making them, that is...
• FoucaultAlthusserDerridaJameson http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/06/foucaultalthuss.html

Monday DeLong Smackdown Watch/Hoisted from 2005: Ignorance Corrected!

Ben Weiss, Curator of Rare Books at the Burndy Library of MIT's Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology:

Ben Weiss: Brad DeLong's Website: DeLong's Ignorance Corrected!: "First off, I love your blog, and read it avidly; many thanks for the wide learning and elegant argument... http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2005-3_archives/000643.html

Links for the Week of June 13, 2017

Must-Reads:

• Josh Bivens: Is 2 percent too low?: Rethinking the Fed’s arbitrary inflation target to avoid another Great Recession: "The end of 2017 will mark 10 years since the beginning of the Great Recession... http://www.epi.org/publication/is-2-percent-too-low/
• EPI: The Color of Law Tickets, Thu, Jun 8, 2017 at 11:00 AM: "On Thursday, June 8th the Economic Policy Institute and the Poverty & Race Research Action Council present Richard Rothstein as he discusses his new book, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America... https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-color-of-law-tickets-34478748866
• Larry Summers: How elite universities meet the challenges of the Trump era: "Rebecca Blumenstein... our conversation focused on how elite universities are meeting the challenges of the Trump era... https://www.ft.com/content/99cc63cd-7e59-3390-a052-6fcb654eb161
• Narayana Kocherlakota: The Fed Needs a Better Inflation Target: "A higher goal, with more public support, would benefit the central bank and the economy... https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-06-08/republicans-weren-t-smiling-about-comey-or-trump
• Tim Carmody (2010): Stock and Flow: "Stock and flow is the master metaphor for media today... http://snarkmarket.com/2010/4890
• Sarah Kliff: Nevada's legislature just passed a radical plan to let anybody sign up for Medicaid: "Nevada’s bill... just four pages... would allow any state resident... to buy into the state Medicaid program... under the name the Nevada Care Plan... https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/6/6/15731622/nevada-medicaid-for-all
• Mark Thoma: The More Trump Fails, the Better Off We’ll Be: "The Trump administration has gone to war against independent sources of information that pose a challenge to its policy goals and the narratives... http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2017/06/05/More-Trump-Fails-Better-We-ll-Be
• Financial Times: The needless urge for higher borrowing costs: "Talk of ‘normalising’ interest rates betrays a mistaken belief... https://www.ft.com/content/b752f7dc-4782-11e7-8d27-59b4dd6296b8
• Zack Beauchamp: What If It Happened Here?: "The events of the past 16 years have shown that presidents have extraordinary power to fundamentally alter the laws and culture of the US after a terror attack... https://www.vox.com/world/2017/5/26/15681154/trump-terrorism-manchester-islam